6 Ups & 4 Downs From Last Night's NXT (19 Feb)
In which the best thing about NXT was, in fact, 205 Live...
Longterm readers (and/or viewers of the video) will be aware of a strange trap that NXT seems to fall into these days. Build a hotly anticipated episode of television - one with an pre-advertised TakeOver quality main event and a number of huge story-beats to expand upon - and it quite often disappoints. However throw one together on the night and, from start to finish, magic happens.
So, with that in mind, we headed into last night's episode off the back of one of the greatest ever installments of TakeOver, with Strong vs Dream in the main event and an entire crowd desperate to hear from either Ciampa or Gargano following the latter costing the former the NXT Championship. On paper, a banner episode of the show. In practice... well, oh dear.
What followed was one of the most incoherent episodes the brand has produced since it moved to the USA Network. If anything, an episode that exposes the flaws in our patented Ups and Downs system because even the good parts of the show carried huge caveats with them. Good job I like a challenge then, I suppose...